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[CT]

Outside of don't let your dorfs get unhappy idiot?  Also if they are unhappy but not quite to tantruming what are some good ways to raise the happiness levels quickly.

[MaximumZero]

Large (8x8 or larger) dining hall with about 50 chairs and tables, smoothed floors and engraved walls ought to do it. Also, build a waterfall, if that's at all feasable. Have plenty of high quality and a large variety of food and drink on hand at all times. Give everyone bedrooms, with a bed, a chest (or coffer, or bag, or other container of some sort) and cabinet apiece in a 3x3 room that is smoothed with the walls engraved. Build a statue garden. Have nice clothes for your dorfs to wear.

[Flaming Toadstool]

To make unhappy dwarfs happy again, I guess you could lock them in a room full of nice statues and engravings with some lavish meals and such. If you can get some mist in there, all the better. That ought to raise their spirits a bit.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Waterfalls. Alternatively, you could get a GCS to web some cage traps, cage the unhappy dwarves, hook the cages up to a lever, and release them for a massive happy thought (IIRC).

Failing that, preventative measures include:
Puppy-falls within sight of crowded areas, to make dwarves jaded and cynical ("doesn't really care about anything anymore") and not care so much if friends and relatives die.
Mandated happiness, with failure to meet the mandate punishable by death
Legendary dining room
Really good brewers
Really good bedrooms
And others.

[ArKFallen]

If you think you can handle it, you could make a really small meeting area and have all your dwarves quickly befriend each other. The effect can be compared to an addict: As long as Urist gets his fix of friendship he won't murder everyone at the loss of a few. Use every other suggestion with this, excluding mandated happiness, for amazing results.

[Note:This is a very quick way to boost happiness, but it can lead to hardcore !!FUN!!. Caution advised.]

[ThatAussieGuy]

I generally just lock them all in the dining room, let the spiral play out, and then conscript the victors survivors into the military to put their new fighting skills to good use.

[Kalalification]

Make actual meals for food instead of farm-to-mouth dining. Do engraving all over the place. Give them shit.

As far as stopping a tantrum spiral in progress I usually just prep the military and equip the sheriff with a more brutal weapon, then proceed to make tons of platinum statue gardens. Platinum statues are your friend, man.

[malroth]

Club med style jails with golden chains, masterwork beds, their own booze and food stockpiles and mist from a waterfall,  the moment anyone starts anything they get locked into a happiness generator.

[Nidokoenig]

IIRC, admiring different types of furniture are unique thoughts. So admiring a table, then admiring a chair, then an exquisite trap, then a coffin, are all different thoughts. So, replace all furniture with masterwork as soon as possible, have a variety of furniture, don't hide your beautiful coffins away in tombs, put them where everyone can see, and put weapons you aren't using into weapontraps in major thoroughfares and meeting areas. If you've got a great architect, make sure the trade depot and furnaces are where people can see them, too. Look for value-added furniture, like expertly dyed and woven ropes, or anything that's heavily decorated.

You could also create panic rooms for important dwarves. Put in some roasts made of four things they love, their favourite booze plus a different kind for variety, lots of gold furniture and pretty, dyed GCS ropes with pretty, dyed GCS cloth images, add a waterfall, some caged animals they like. One dwarf per room, lock them in and flood the entrance hallway so beserkers can't bother them.

[Jake]

Getting to know every single dwarf once the fortress exceeds a certain size is virtually impossible, so occasionally trade for gems and stone that aren't available locally; odds are you'll pick up somebody's favourite.

And one of my signature fortress design features is to smooth out all my worked-out mineral veins, engrave the walls and turn them into big sculpture parks. My dwarves seem to prefer wandering around the galleries to socialising, which isn't quite the effect I intended but does undeniably help mute the effect of suffering casualties.

[Sygnus]

Mandated happiness, with failure to meet the mandate punishable by death

How is said thing possible

[Urist Imiknorris]

Unhappiness -> tantrum -> break things -> hammer of the law (ideally an actual hammer).
Or Unhappiness -> burrow underneath a drawbridge -> lower bridge.

[Angel Of Death]

I engrave the workspace and add random pretty shit to it. That has completely stopped tantrums for me.

[Fredd]

Find spots that are traveled through often, and place/build items of high value they can appreciate as they  go to/from work. Use artifacts in storage, things made from valuable metals. Platinum/gold/addy doors do a good job, as well as statues. Even a cage containing a puppy, kitten, or some other animal can give happy thoughts. Don't put a tame grazer in one, wild ones will work, and won't starve as tame ones will.
 Even a depot made from valuable metals is a good idea

[darthbob88]

Never actually had a tantrum spiral, but the above methods have served me well in preventing them, and I fully endorse them.

My main method is a wonderful dining room, with very nice chairs and tables, some snazzy statuary, smoothed and engraved walls and floors, preferably built into or including a mineral vein, and with every placeable artifact available built in it. One of the statues is used to define a statue garden for people to socialize and throw parties, thus providing even further happiness. Admittedly, that last would lead to increased death if it ever came to a tantrum spiral, but I've been lucky so far. I also almost never use raw food, everything gets cooked into really nice prepared meals or brewed into snazzy booze. I'm also considering moving my primary animal storage cage to the dining room, for use as a zoo sort of deal.